Just a Dream
by Natsumi Wakabe
Summary: Bilbo wakes up from a dream/nightmare, and grieves in the way he knows best- by writing until it's too much. Angst alert!


_Disclaimer: Wakabe Writing Firm doesn't own The Hobbit_

_A/N: Natsumi's almost done with NaNoWriMo. She's really tired, running out of steam, and needed to write something different from her story. Thus this little fic. Hope you enjoy, please review-Moriah (Secret Secretary, Wakabe Writing Firm)_

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_"Please Thorin," whispered a small figure at the deathbed of a dwarrow he had crossed hell and high water for. "Please don't go. Come back, come back, please... please Thorin..."_

_Sorrow and loss bent the back of the grieving halfling, head held in shame, tears of loss pouring out to soak hands shaking with grief and anguish. But the figure upon the bed did not respond, merely lay there stiller than death. For an eternity, the hobbit continued to beg the body before him to breathe, to recall the soul that had once resided there, to live again. His eyes closed, he did not know what happened, only that he felt a hand upon his knee. He took in a shuddering breath, blinking back some of the tears to clear his vision and shoo away the one that had come to take him from the side of someone held dear and now gone._

_But upon looking up, horror and dread and disbelief came forth as he stared at the thing before him. Because somehow, impossibly, terribly true, the dead king had come up, staring at him, but was still dead. His eyes, once so blue, more blue than the sky or sapphires or rivers cold and life-giving, were dull and glazed, no spark of life within them, not even the smallest flame of pain that had always been in them before. His skin was still ashen and grey, lips blue with lack of oxygen. And his wounds were still open with the darkened blood of the dead sluggishly dripping down._

_"Bilbo." Even the voice was a twisted reflection, the once deep and smooth voice of a king now grated and harsh, like centuries of disuse had occurred in the span of an hour. Bilbo stared in horror as the figure lurched forward, cold and pale and wrong hands holding him, pulling him closer._

_"Bilbo," the living corpse sighed, the air coming from his mouth foul and horrid, and Bilbo was too close, too close, and the dead king brought him too close, too close too close tooclosetooclosetooclose-_

With a scream, Bilbo Baggins shot up out of bed, eyes wide and darting all around, heart thundering loud enough to wake the dead. He pressed up against his headboard, arms braced against the wooden frame, eyes unseeing as his night terror kept its grip on him. When his panic finally ended, he looked around the room to reassure himself that he was, indeed, back at Bag End, _back at home_ and far away from any adventures, mountains, or dwarves that lie in eternal rest. He flopped back down onto his pillow, breathing heavily still, with sweat running cold down his face and back.

Just a dream. Just a dream. That's all just a dream. The delusions of a mind so desperate and tormented that it took the realities of the past and twisted them with the desires of the heart but darkened by fear and pain. That was all it could ever be - because he knew where the dwarrow he had and would have called king lay, buried deep in that cursed mountain with that blasted gold and damned stone, forever his companion.

Shaking, Bilbo forced himself out of bed, stumbling through the dark. His fingers gave him guidance until he found himself in his study, the indent in the doorway telling him that he had reached his destination. He ran into his chair, a rush of curses and snarls from his mouth. As he finally opened the second drawer and got out a bit of flint and a candle.

After getting the candle on its holder and lighting it (scattering half the papers and nicnacks from his desk down to the floor in a flutter) he grabbed the first journal (the cover dark blue - not _his_ blue, never _his_ blue) and tore it open. His hands, no longer shaking as badly but still held hostage to shredded nerves and half-formed thoughts of deeds done, gripped the quill too tight, the feather end now bent and twisted, metal tip stabbing into ink.

As Bilbo took pen to paper, his breath hitched, growing uneven and ragged as he continued to write, unable to stop as memories sprang forth, scenes of blood and violence, death and loss chasing away all of the happier times of a quest that had both gifted and cursed him. As he wrote tears fell liberally and freely from his eyes, soaking the paper beneath his fingers in his sorrow and pain that never left, and most likely never would.

For hours he wrote, sometimes with beautiful phrases and emotional overtures. Other times, it was half-formed sentences, crossed out usually, desperately trying to describe the beauty of a sunrise after a harrowing night of fighting for one more minute of life, one more breath of heated and thin air, or the all-encompassing grief and despair and loss too soon after what was thought to be victory.

When the sun rose, its rays pierced the almost-darkness of Bilbo's study, he finally stopped. He tried to blink back tears desperate to fall, but it was to no avail. Giving up, he hunched over his desk, sobbing hard like he had for too many nights since his return. His hand flew to his chest, clutching at a small, silver ring on a thin but sturdy chain.

As the sun rose higher and life outside of Bag End resumed, Bilbo stayed in his study, grief too heavy to get up so soon, his hand holding onto one of the last things that connected him to a once possible future in a land far to the east, where a king was finally home under his mountain, and would remain until the end of days.

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_Okay, so I know it doesn't happen, but I wanted Thorin to have given Bilbo a ring or something as he lay on his deathbed. And I wanted it to be with him always, something to give him a piece of Thorin to hold onto... because I'm a horrible person like that. _


End file.
